


Child of the Sea: The Life of a Teenage Selkie

by reader1718



Category: No Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-05 14:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3123956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reader1718/pseuds/reader1718





	Child of the Sea: The Life of a Teenage Selkie

Child of the Sea **  
**

The Life of a Teenage Selkie

Tony Wyzek was a normal kid. Well, mostly normal. His mother, Linda, had separated from his father years ago. They had gone their separate ways for reasons Tony didn’t know or understand. He went to school like most kids, hung out with friends, did homework, then went to bed after having a little TV time. This week, however, Tony had a special project: to go through the things in his family’s attic and find something special, learn about it, and then talk about it in class. The goal was to learn about history through learning his own family’s history. Tony would learn something about his family’s history all right, but not the kind of history that he could report in class.

Tony was pawing through boxes of old junk in the attic when he noticed an old trunk he’d never seen before. It contained what appeared to be a fur coat at first, but on closer inspection was revealed to be a sealskin! Tony couldn’t imagine what a sealskin could possibly be doing in their attic, but as he held it, he again heard the ocean, as he often had so many times in the past. Curious, Tony reached inside the flipper of the skin and drew it around himself, relaxing into the softness of the skin, when suddenly the flipper tightened around his wrist and started to contract around him! Tony screamed in terror, bringing his mother running, and she stopped dead when she saw him in the rapidly contracting sealskin. She helped him out of the skin and comforted her terrified son.

“Mom, what’s going on? Why did that skin contract around me like that?” Tony asked in fear. His mother then knew it was time to tell him the truth. She explained that the skin was hers. She was a selkie (a seal-woman) and she had come out of the sea years ago after falling in love with Jack, Tony’s father. She told him that the skin had reacted that way because it had felt the presence of another selkie—him! Tony couldn’t believe it! Did she just tell him that she was a seal, and that he was too?! That was impossible, wasn’t it? But how else could he explain what happened only moments ago? Tony was somewhat frightened by the idea of becoming a seal, but at the same time excited to learn more about that half of his heritage. Linda promised to show her son how to use his own skin, one she’d kept hidden from him when he was born. She would also go with him when he changed for awhile before letting him go off on his own. Even so, Tony acknowledged that he would be grateful for her company whenever he changed.

Tony had wanted to try the skin out immediately after school the next day, but wound up with so much homework that it was the weekend before he could. The change felt a bit strange at first, but after he got used to it, it felt familiar and wonderful. He lost track of how long he was out swimming, until Linda reminded him they needed to get back so he could go to bed and be ready for school on Monday. Tony went through school as if in a daze, thinking longingly of the ocean and his sealskin, eagerly waiting till he could change again. It went like that for days until finally Tony's friends became suspicious and decided to follow him when he left his house. Unfortunately they didn't see anything much because it had already been a very foggy day and it was worse now because the sun was going down.

However, they did see something peculiar the next day. They were walking beside the shores of the East River when suddenly a seal beached itself on the sand, took off its skin and became Tony! Needless to say, Tony was very startled to see his friends and was worried about what they would think of him now that they knew he could turn into a seal. However, he needn't have worried, has his friends nearly asked him to explain what was going on. Tony wound up telling them everything, from his discovery of the sealskin in the attic to his own first transformation into a seal and the events that followed. Riff the leader of his gang of friends, the Jets, thought that Tony's secret of changing into a seal was a bit strange, but he accepted it because he knew that this was who his friend really was. Now that he lived part of his life in the sea, Tony decided to resign as leader of Jets and give the position to Riff instead.

However, more problems soon surfaced when Tony saw and became attracted to Maria Nunez, sister to the Jets rival gang leader Bernardo. Tony was afraid to tell her that he was a selkie because he was afraid that she would be freaked out and would tell the newspapers. Then one day Maria inadvertently learned his secret, and was surprisingly excepting of it. This meant that Tony no longer had to hide his secret and trust her not to tell anyone. They had a special relationship for a while before her brother found out and forbade it. Also, call of the sea was too strong for Tony to consider leaving his life in the sea the way his mother had. Tony knew that half of him would always belong to the ocean and he would always return to it when it called. Finally after Tony's years of schooling on land were over, Tony and his mother both decided to return to the sea. They were tempted by the freedom it offered and sense of comfort that they felt when they were swimming. So they went to the edge of the sea and changed one last time before swimming off into the distance, never to return.

The End


End file.
